What a shock — porn producers are going elsewhere: Editorial

The porn condoms war heated up again this week after a California-based adult video company was found to have moved production to Florida to make a film featuring unprotected sex, and another performer announced he has tested HIV positive.

These developments are not related. But because they have the potential to further sully the reputation of pornographers, they drew similarly strident reactions from condom crusader Michael Weinstein. These are the sorts of reactions that can only turn off people with moderate views on the issue and discourage cooperation on a matter of public health.

Weinstein, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation president, sounds shocked — shocked — that porn producers are leaving California, where voters last November enacted a requirement for condom use on adult film sets in Los Angeles County and Assemblyman Isadore Hall is pushing a similar law statewide. Weinstein is outraged by what he seems to think is a dirty trick by dirty-movie producers, accusing them of playing a “shell game in order to evade the laws we have.” He wants health officials to investigate if Florida’s “sanitary nuisance” laws have been broken.

Well, all of this is exactly what opponents of L.A. County’s Measure B said would happen if it passed: Producers would seek to leave the county, and maybe even California, for places like Florida where no such law prohibits shooting the condom-free scenes that are more popular with viewers. As if enforcing the L.A. law wasn’t going to be difficult enough, Weinstein and his allies will be chasing producers around the country.

It’s silly for Weinstein to condemn producers for seeking favorable conditions, as business owners do in any industry.

Whatever one’s opinion of porn, its departure could mean the loss of the $1 billion a year and 10,000 jobs the industry is estimated to bring to Southern California, mostly in the San Fernando Valley.

Weinstein also sounds shocked to find that actors continue to contract sexually transmitted diseases despite L.A. County’s condom requirement. Joshua Rodgers, who works in gay porn, said this week he was recently diagnosed with HIV; this was 12 days after porn performer Cameron Bay, who is Rodgers’ girlfriend, said she is HIV positive, leading to a week-long moratorium on porn production. Rodgers said he has performed since 2010 on sets that require condoms.

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To Weinstein, the news means the industry and its trade association “do not have one shred of credibility left.”

This outrage would be more fitting if, say, Rodgers (whose nom de porn is Rod Daily) had been HIV positive for years, the industry’s avowed frequent testing failed to detect the virus, and he’d worked without condoms. But no such allegations are reported.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation can do as much good in promoting health in the adult entertainment industry as it has in the fight against AIDS. But now that condoms are a political issue, the AHF’s leaders must try to enlist the support of reasonable, everyday citizens.

Denying the predictable economic impact of Measure B, and blaming a performer’s HIV positive on the adult industry without a clear connection, will drive away more allies than it attracts.